I lead Citrix (NASDAQ:CTXS) world wide advocacy efforts with a particular focus on increasing the volume, reach and influence of Citrix's extensive portfolio of cloud solutions used by more than 260,000 customers and 100 million end users across the globe.

I'm recognized as an early innovator in the cloud computing space, as the founder of Enomaly in 2004 (Acquired by Virtustream in 2012). Enomaly was among the first to develop a self-service infrastructure as a service (IaaS) platform (ECP) circa 2005, as well as SpotCloud (2011) the first commodity style cloud computing Spot Market.

Brazil's Booming Business of Big Data

Endless jungle landscapes and bountiful resources are generally what you think of when thinking of Brazil. I recently had the opportunity to spend a few days with some of Brazil’s leading technologists while attending Consegi, an annual Congress of International Free Software for Electronic Government. The event is sponsored by Serpro, the Brazilian government’s Federal Data Processing agency. The goal of the congress is to provide a platform to promote the exchange of experiences and information between government, civil society and representatives of partner countries. The big topic this year was Brazil’s burgeoning BigData scene which has recently exploded thanks in part to the intersection of Brazil’s new found oil & gas resources and the rapid growth within its IT scene in places like Rio De Janeiro.

To understand the opportunities for IT in Brazil is to understand two distinct yet uniquely connected sectors. According to the US Energy Information Administration website, most of Brazil’s oil is currently produced in the southeastern region of the country in Rio de Janeiro and Espírito Santo states. More than 90 percent of Brazil’s oil production is offshore in very deep water and consists of so called ‘mostly heavy grades.’ Six fields in the Campos Basin (Marlim, Marlim Sul, Marlim Leste, Roncador, Jubarte, and Barracuda) account for more than half of Brazil’s crude oil production. Recent offshore exploration efforts in Brazil have yielded massive discoveries of pre-salt oil fields.

These recent discoveries have led to a gold rush of International oil companies into the Brazilian market. The Shell-operated Parque de Conchas project and the Chevron-operated Frade projects along with State-controlled Petrobras are among the dominant participants in Brazil’s oil and gas sector. Until recently, Petrobras held a monopoly on most oil-related activities in the country. This changed in 1997 when the government opened the sector to competition. Royal Dutch Shell was the first foreign crude oil producer in the country, and it is now joined by Chevron, Repsol, BP, Anadarko, El Paso, Galp Energia, Repsol, Statoil, BG Group, Sinopec, ONGC, and TNK-BO. Competition in the sector is not just from foreign companies: Brazilian oil company OGX, which is staffed largely with former Petrobras employees, started to produce oil in the Campos Basin in 2011.

Today only 2% of Oil exploration in Brazil is done by companies other than Petrobras with an estimated R&D investment of $500 million USD in 2011. In the next 5 year it is expected that this number will increase 25%, attracting investments from Chevron, Repsol, BP, Maersk, Shell and others. The total amount of R&D investment forecast to hit $7 billion USD by 2017.

To help foster a local R&D scene, Brazil’s national development bank BNDES has made available $1.3 billion USD in tax credits as part of its Inova Petro funding scheme. The program is a joint initiative between BNDES, state-run oil company Petrobras and the federal government’s technology agency Finep, “the objective is to support the local production chain and contribute to the fulfillment of the local content policy through greater competitiveness and sustainability,” the lender said.

Thanks in part to increased Government incentives as well as local investments by foreign energy companies, a group of international technology companies are quickly moving in to help take advantage of the opportunity. One such example is EMC who recently invested $100m USD into a new R&D center in Rio de Janeiro. The R&D center focus is on BigData and specializes on solutions and services to store, manage, protect and analyze information to meet the needs of the large volume of data generated by the oil industry. The center is run by Dr. Karin Breitman who prior to heading EMC’s BigData research center worked as a Computer Science Professor in the Informatics Department of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) and is broadly considered one of Brazil leading technologists.

Like oil, data is also quickly emerging as a powerful global resource. According to IDC, every two years the amount of data created doubles. Currently there are about 500 quadrillion files in the digital world. It is predicted that in 2020 the world will generate an incredible 35 zettabytes, or 35 trillion gigabytes of information. – Everything we do in the real world leaves a foot print in the digital world leading to huge opportunities for those with the tools and knowledge to exploit these sources of information.

“From the time we wake up until we go to sleep, we are creating information, and such data have to go somewhere” – says Dr Karin Breitman head of EMC’s BigData R&D Lab.

A recent report by EMC put this vast amount of information into context. In 2011, a colossal 1.8 zettabytes was created globally. In terms of sheer volume, 1.8 zettabytes of data is equivalent to:

Every person in the United States tweeting 3 tweets per minute for 26,976 years nonstop

Every person in the world having over 215 million high-resolution MRI scans per day

Over 200 billion HD movies (each 2 hours in length)—would take 1 person 47 million years to watch every movie 24×7

According to EMC’s report, the forces behind this relentless growth are driven by technology and money. New “information taming” technologies are driving the cost of creating, capturing, managing and storing information down to one-sixth of what it was in 2005. Additionally, since 2005 annual enterprise investments in the Digital Universe—cloud, hardware, software, services, and staff to create, manage, store and generate revenue from the information—have increased 50% to $4 trillion (USD). This is particularly true in Brazil’s energy sector where access to the analytics and the related data can mean the difference between success and failure for new entrants into the market.

In a MIT Technology Review article, Paul Siegele, the president of Chevron describes how Data, in this case, really is the new oil. “It’s pretty sweeping,” says Siegele. “Information technology is enabling us to get more barrels of each asset.”

The MIT article goes to describe how the latest crop of technologies have gained speed along with the underlying trends: cheaper computing and communications technology, and a proliferation of data sensors and analytical software; “The industry term is the “digital oil field,” though the biggest companies have trademarked their own versions. At Chevron, it’s the “i-field.” BP has the “Field of the Future,” and Royal Dutch Shell likes “Smart Fields.” Whatever these programs are called, they’ll play a huge role in the future of energy companies. The ones that are most successful at operating remotely and using data wisely will claim big rewards. And, as extraction becomes more difficult, almost $20 trillion in investments will be needed to satisfy these future needs.”

Un-questionably, the opportunity in Brazil is found within the intersection of the country’s vast energy resources and the data that is enabling it to be found. If you are looking for big opportunities in Brazil, think BigData for Big Oil.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.